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March 04, 2009

DiMaggio in Disneyland

This week marks the start of baseball's Spring Training, and the 10th anniversary of the death of a baseball legend, Joe DiMaggio. Dave Webber is a sportscaster who met Joe DiMaggio a few years before DiMaggio passed away. Usually Joe DiMaggio didn't sign autographs in his later years, and when Dave asked for one, he wasn't surprised to be turned down. But then Dave said something that caused the ballplayer to turn around, chuckle, and sign Dave's baseball. Dick Gordon speaks with Dave Webber about that one magical afternoon and the memory of a lifetime.

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This weekend is a big deal for horse racing fans - it's the Belmont Stakes. Julie Shapiro has a love letter to her favorite horse, Zenyatta. And Rachel Louise Snyder looks into the practice of courtship on horseback in Kazakhstan.

This weekend, tennis fans around the world will watch the finals of the U.S. Open. Among them will be Dejon Bivens, a tennis player and freshman at North Carolina State University. Dejon fell in love with tennis in high school, earned the No.1 ranking for an 18- year-old in North Carolina, and steadily moved up the list of Top 100 Junior National players in the country. Dejon's foster mom, Deborah Foster-Smith also joins Dick to talk about how Dejon's smile persuaded her to let him move in.

Sheldon Kennedy played for the NHL for years, but he’s better known for standing up and talking publically about what he went through as a victim of child abuse by one of his coaches. He now works to prevent the abuse of young people through a group he founded to train people to recognize the signs of abuse.

Diane Crump was the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. It used to be illegal for a woman to be a jockey. Even after the law changed, male jockeys would boycott any woman who tried. Also in this episode, a check-in with Jeremy Lee.

This July, Cody Dent managed to spoil a perfect game by Boston Red Sox minor league affiliate the Lowell Spinners. It’s kind of like the infamous 1978 day in which his father Bucky Dent spoiled a game for the Red Sox.

More from A Difficult Defense [3.4.2009]

Life

The former Serbian leader Radovan Karadzic is now at the International Criminal Tribunal, preparing to be tried on war crimes charges. Like Slobodan Milosevic before him, Karadzic plans to defend himself.

At the time of Milosevic's trial, attorney Steven Kay was appointed to the former leader's defense team.